Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 November 1917 — The Real Man [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Real Man

By Francis Lynde

IllusiraUonS by Olrwinl%erA

SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER I—J. Montague Smith, Lawrenceville bank cashier and society man, receives two letters. One warns him that a note which he has O. K.’d with consent St Watrous Dunham, the bank’s preslent, is worthless. The other is a summons from Dunham. He breaks an appointment with Vera Richlander, daughter of the local millionaire, and meets Dunham alone at night in the bank. CHAPTER ll—Dunham threatens Smith with the police. Smith becomes aggressive. Dunham draws a pistol and is floored by a blow that apparently kills him. Smith escapes on an outgoing freight train. CHAPTER lll—Near Brewster, Colo., Dexter Baldwin, president of the Timanyonl Ditch company, gets Smith an office job at the big dam the company Is building. CHAPTER IV—Williams, chief engineer, finds the hobo Smith used to money in big chunks and to making it work. The company is fighting concealed opposition and is near ruin. Smith is jokingly suggested as a financial doctor. CHAPTER V—Williams talks business to Smith, who will tell nothing of his past. Smith pushes a stalled auto away from an ‘ oncoming train and saves the colonel’s daughter Corona. CHAPTER VT—While Corona looks on he drives off three bogus mining right claimants from the company’s land. CHARTER Vll—The colonel takes Smith to his home and persuades him, in spite of Smith’s warning, to undertake the financial salvation of the company. CHAPTER Vlll—Crawford Stanton, hired by eastern interests to kill off the ditch company, sets his spies to work to find out who Smith is. CHAPTER IX—Smith reorganizes the company and gets a loan from K-inzie, the local banker. CHAPTER X—ln the midst of a "mira-cle-working” campaign Corona Smith alarming questions. He reads that Dunham, still living, has doubled the reward for his capture.

CHAPTER XI. The Narrow World. At the fresh newspaper reminder that his sudden bound upward from the laboring ranks to the executive headship of the irrigation project had merely made him a more conspicuous target for the man-hunters, Smith scanted himself of sleep and redoubled his efforts to put the new company on a sound and permanent footing. In the nature of things he felt that his own shift must necessarily be short. The more or less dramatic coup in Timanyoni High Line had advertised him thoroughly. He was rapidly coming to be the best-known man in Brewster, and he chefrished no Illusions about lost identities, or the ability to lose them, in the land where time andj space have been wired and railroaded pretty well out of existence. It was needful that he should work while the day was his in which to work; and he '"did work. There was still much to be done. Williams was having a threat of labor troubles at the dam, and Stillings had unearthed another possible flaw in the land titles dating back to the promotion of a certain railroad which had never gotten Tar beyond the paper stage and the acquiring of some of its rights of way. Smith flung himself masterfully at the new difficulties as they arose, and earned his meed of praise from the men for whom he overcame them. But under the surface current of the hurrying business tide a bitter undertow was Loginning to set in. He took his first decided backward step on the night ■when he went into a hardware store and bought a pistol. The free, fairlighting spirit which had sent him barehanded against the three claim-jump-ers was gone and in its place there was a fell determination, as yet, but keying itself to the barbaric pitch. It had been a day of nagging distractions. A rumor been sent afoot — Ly Stanton, as Smith made no doubt—"hinting that the new dam would be unsafe when it should be completed ; that its breaking, with the reservoir behind It, would carry death and destruction to the lowlands and even to the city. 'Timid stockholders, seeing colossal damage suits in the bare possibility, had taken the alarm, and Smith had spent the greater part of the day in •trying to calm their fears. For this cause, and some others, he was on the ragged edge when Baldwin dropped in on his way home from the dam and protested. “Look here, John; you’re overdoing this thing world without end! You break It off short, right now, and go home with me and get your dinner and a good night’s rest. Get your coat and hat and come along, or I’ll rope you ■down and hog-tie you.” For once in a way, Smith found that there was no fight left in him, and he yielded, telling himself that another acceptance of the Baldwin hospitality, more or less, could make no difference. But no sooner was the colonel’s gray roadster headed for the bridge across the Timanyoni than the exhilarating reaction set in. In a twinkling the business cares, and the deeper worries as well, fled away, and in their place heart-hunger was loosed. After dinner, a meal at which he ate little and was well content to satisfy the hunger of. his soul by the road of the eye, Smith went out to the portico to smoke. The most gorgeous of mountain sunsets was painting itself upon

the sky over the western Tlmanyonls, but he had no eyes for natural grandeurs, and no ears for any sound save one—the footstep he was listen-

ing for. It came at length, and he tried to look as tired as he had been when the colonel made him close his desk and leave the office; tried and apparently succeeded. “You poor, broken-down Samson, carrying all the brazen gates of the money-Philistlnes on your shoulders! You had to come to us at last, didn’t you? Let me be your Delilah and fix that chair so that it will be really comfortable.” She said it only half .mockingly, and he forgave the sarcasm when she arranged some of the hammock pillows in the easiest of the porch chairs and made him bury himself luxuriously in them. Still holding the idea, brought over from that afternoon of the name questioning, that she had in some way discovered his true identity, Smith was watching narrowly for danger-signals when he thanked her and said:

“You say it just as it is. I had to come. But you could never be anybody’s Delilah, could you? She was a betrayer, if you recollect.” He made the suggestion purposely, but it was wholly ignored, and there was no guile in the slate-gray eyes. “You mean that you didn’t want to come?” “No; not that. I have wanted to come every time your father has asked me. But there are reasons—good reasonsI—why 1 —why I shouldn’t be here.” If she knew any of the reasons she made no sign. She was sitting in the hammock and touching one slippered toe to the flagstones for the swinging push. From Smith’s point of view she had for a background the gorgeous sunset, but he could not see the more distant glories. “We owe you much, and we are going to owe you more,” she said. "You mustn’t think that we don’t appreciate you at your full value. Colonel-daddy thinks you are the most wonderful somebody that ever lived, and so do a lot of the others.”

“And you?” he couldn’t resist saying. “I’m just plain ashamed—for the way I treated you when you were nere before. I’ve been eating humble-ple ever since.” Smith breathed freer. Nobody but a most consummate actress could have simulated her frank sincerity. He had jumped too quickly to the small sum-in-addition conclusion. She did not know the story of the bank cashier. “f - don’t know, why you should feel that way,” he said, eager, now, to run where he had before been afraid to walk. “I do. And I believe you wanted to shame me. I believe you gave up your place at the’-dam and took hold with daddy more to show me what an inconsequent little idiot I was than for any other reason. Didn’t you, really?” He laughed in quiet ecstasy at this newest and most adorable of the moods. “Honest confession is good for the soul: I did,” he boasted. “Now beat that for frankness, if you can.” “I can’t,” she admitted, laughing back at him. “But now you’ve accomplished your purpose, I hope you are not going to give up. That would be a little hard on colonel-daddy.” “Oh, ho; I’m not going to give up—until I have to.” “Does that mean more than it says?” “Yes, I’m afraid it does.” She was silent for the length of time that it took the flaming crimson in the western sky to fade to salmon. The colonel had mounted the steps and was coming toward them. The young woman slipped from the hammock and stood up. “Don’t go,” said Smith, feeling as if he were losing an opportunity and leaving much unsaid that ought to be said. But the answer was a quiet “good night” and she was gone. Smith went back to town with the colonel the next morning physically rested, to be sure, but in a frame of mind bordering again upon the sardonic. One thing stood out clearly

ne was most unmistakably in love with Corona Baldwin. Hence there was another high resolve not to go to Hillcrest again until !ie could go as a free man; a resolve which, it is perhaps needless to say, was broken thereafter as often as the colonel asked him to go. Why, in the ast resort, Smith should have finally chosen a confidant in the person of William Starbuck, the reformed cowpuncher, he scarcely knew. But it was to Starbuck that he appealed for advice when the sentimental situation aad grown fairly desperate. “I’ve told you enough so that you ?an understand the vise-nip of it, Billy,” he said to Starbuck one night when he had dragged the mine owner ip to the bathroom suite in the Hophra

House, and had told him just a little, enough to merely hint at his condition. ‘You see how it stacks up. I'm in a fair way to come out of this the biggest scoundrel alive —the piker who akes advantage of the innocence of a ?ood girl. I’m not the man she thinks [ am. I a?n standing over a volcano pit wery minute of the day. If it blows ip, I’m gone, obliterated, wiped out.” “Is it aiming to blow up?” asked Starbuck sagely. “I don’t know any more about that than you do. It is the kind that usually does blow up sooner or later. I’ve □repared for it /is well as I can. What Colonel Baldwin and the rest of you aeeded was a financial manager, and Timanyoni High Line has its fighting chance —which was more than Timanyoni Ditch had when I took hold. If I should drop out now, you and Maxwell ind the colonel and Kinzie could go on and make the fight; but that doesn’t help out in this other matter.” Starbuck smoked in silence for a long minute or two before he said: “Is another woman in it, John?” ; but not in the way you mean.” “Corry’s a mighty fine little girl, John,” said Starbuck slowly. “Any one of a dozen fellows I could name would give all their old shoes to swap chances with you.” “That isn’t exactly the kind of advice I’m needing,” was the sober rejoinder. “No; but it was the kind you were wanting, when you tolled me off up here,” laughed the ex-cowpuncher. “I know the symptoms. Had ’em myself for about two years so bad that I could wake up in the middle of the night and taste ’em. Go in and win. Maybe the great big stumbling-block you’re worrying about wouldn’t mean anything at all to an open-minded young woman like Corona; most likely it wouldn’t.” “If she could know the whole truth —and believe it,” said Smith musingly. “You tell her the truth, and she’ll take care of the believing part of it, all right. You needn’t lose any sleep about that.’*

Smith drew a long breath and removed his pipe to say: “I haven’t the nerve, Billy, and that’s the plain fact. I have already told her a little of it. She knows that I—" Starbuck broke in with a laugh. “Yes; it’s a shouting pity about your nerve! You’ve been putting up such a blooming scary fight in this irrigation business i|iat we all know you haven’t any nerved If I had your job in that, I’d be going around here toting two guns and wondering if I couldn't make room in the holster for another.” Smith shook his head. “I was safe enough so long as Stanton thought I was the resident manager and promoter for a new bunch of big money in the background. But he has had me shadowed and tracked until now I guess he is pretty well convinced that I actually had the audacity to play a lone hand; and a bluffing hand, at that. That makes a difference, of course. Two days after I had climbed into the saddle here, he sent a couple of his strikers after me. I don’t know just what their orders were, but they seemed to want to fight:—and they got it. It was in Blue Pete’s doggery, up at the camp.” “Gun,s?” queried Starbuck. “Theirs; not mine, because I didn’t have any. I managed to get the shoot-ing-irons away from them before we had mixed very far.” “You’re just about the biggest, longeared, stiff-backed, stubborn wild ass of the wallows that was ever let loose in a half-reformed gun country!” grumbled the ex-cowman. “You’re fixing to get yourself all killed up. Smith. Haven’t you sense enough to see that these rustlers will rub you out in two twitches of a dead lamb’s tail if they’ve made up their minds that you are the 1,1 igh Line main guy and the only one?” “Of course,” said the wild ass easily. “If they could lay me up for a month or two—” “Lay up, nothing!” retorted Starbuck. “Lay you down, about six feet underground, is what I mean!” “Pshaw !” exclaimed the one whose fears ran in a far different channel

from any that could be Cnc by rwre corporation violence. “Ttei is Ataer' IfU, in the twentieth crarmry... We don't kill our business <xunj«e*riz.:e> ww»days.” “Don't weY* snorted “That will be all right, too. We'E just for the sake of arrumemi. that my respected and resperrat-'e daiiy-irt-law, or whatever other sl_k-&j.::*d eld money-bags happens to te" paying Crawford Stanton's salary and Kenission, wouldn't send <«ur ±a cohr to have you killed off. Maybe StnftMk himself, wouldn’t stand f«r it if you'd put it that barefaced. Dut dt-diy-ta-law, and Stanto®, _>»d aU tte «ters» hire blacklegs and sharpers ini gunmen and thugs. And every core in a while somebody takes a wink f«je a —and bang! goes a gun.” “Well, what's the answer s said Pete Simms.’ “Tote an arsenal yours?2£. and be ready to shoot first, and ask qpestiMa afterward. Thai's The «aJy way you. can live peaceably with mdi** Jake Boogerfield aHd Leteertyste Simms.” Smith got out of his etarir and took a turn up and down the Jeagnh es the room. When he came hack to stand before Starbuck, be said; “I did that. Billy. I've been carrying a gas for a week and more; n<«t for these <fiteh pirates, but for somebody efife. The other nirrht, when I was o®r at Hillcrest, Corona hapy«ened to see it. Fra not going to tell yoa what she sal-1, but when I came hack to K , va the next morning, I chucked ibe gun iata a desk drawer. And I hope In gKsag to be man enough not to wear it again." Starbuck dropped tte stetjeet ate ruptly and looked at .his warrh. “You liked to have done iL Fulling me off up here,” be remarked. “Taa due to be at the train to meet Mrs. Bffly, and I’ve got just about three ■taaxtea. So long.”

Smith changed his Street cfothes leisurely after Starbuck ted iwae. aad when be went downstairs sipped at the desk to toss his rowan key to the clerk. The hotel recSsier was lying cpew oa the counter. and from force tebtt he ran his eye down the list Sate arrivals.. Al the end of tte list, in sprawling characters xgxa wteeh tte ink was yet fresh, be read kfs sentence, and for the first rime in has fife knew the meaning of panic fear. The newest entry was: “Josiah Richlander a&d daughter, Chicago.” Smith was not mis Jed by tte placename. There was only <®* “’Josiah Richlander” in the world fw tea, and he knew that the LawreDrerEe magnate, in registering frora CMcag<K wte only following the example of then* who, for good reasons «r n® reason, use the name of their latest stopping place for a registry address. . (TO BE CO.VHXni- .»

"You Broken-Down Samson.”

‘I’m Not the Man She Thinks I Am. I Am Standing Over a Volcano—"